Morbid Romantic

Book Review & Personal Blog

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:
Grab your current read.
Let the book fall open to a random page.
Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
Please avoid spoilers!

Sara Weiss thought that I seemed like a simple young woman, and she decided I was incredibly lucky to have been given such a gift, as she considered it. She believed everything Lattesta had told her about what had happened at the Pyramid, because underneath her practical approach to life there was a streak of mysticism.

- Dead and Gone (Charlaine Harris), pg. 111

I do have a list of books to review that I hope to get done… and slowly turn out. I won’t post them all in the same day because that would just be insane.

Dead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 10) by Charlaine Harris (Purchased from Barnes and Noble)
After enduring torture and the loss of loved ones during the brief but deadly Faery War, Sookie Stackhouse is hurt and she’s angry. Just about the only bright spot in her life is the love she thinks she feels for vampire Eric Northman. But he’s under scrutiny by the new Vampire King because of their relationship. And as the political implications of the Shifters coming out are beginning to be felt, Sookie’s connection to the Shreveport pack draws her into the debate. Worst of all, though the door to Faery has been closed, there are still some Fae on the human side-and one of them is angry at Sookie. Very, very angry…

Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino (Purchased from Barnes & Noble)
Readers with a taste for ambiguity and oddball characters will enjoy this twisted novel of suspense from Japanese author Kirino (Out). The Apartment Serial Murders case, which involved the brutal killings of two Tokyo prostitutes, has gripped the country, leading to the arrest of a Chinese immigrant, Zhang Zhe-zhong, for the crimes. Strangely, Zhang freely admits to murdering the first victim, Yuriko Hirata, but denies the near-identical slaying 10 months later of Kazue Sato. The events leading to the killings are related from a variety of perspectives—that of Yuriko’s unnamed older sister, bitterly jealous of her sibling’s good looks; of each victim; and of the accused. Unusual connections—for example, Kazue was a classmate of the older sister—cast doubt on the veracity of individual narrators. This mesmerizing tale of betrayal reveals some sobering truths about Japan’s social hierarchy.

Wow, can you believe we are back again? After how long? I don’t even know.

Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr
Katie’s Book Blog

Blood Born by Linda Howard and Linda Jones
Readaholic

Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt
A Bookworm’s World

It no longer made any sense to me to call this section ‘In the Mail’ since I buy more books now than I am sent… of course due to the fact that I have been busy and accepting offers would have been greedy. With my first year of Grad school over, I now have an entire summer dedicated to reading. Still, I don’t want to over extend what I am capable of, so I am going to be diving into my severe backlog, if anything just to be able to clean some of it out and give my old books away.

Long story short: will be buying books or reading my backlog, not accepting offers or tours.

I WILL get through a large portion of this stack, cross my heart. As it is, I have a few books waiting that I need to write reviews for. Okay. MORE than a few. No matter, though. The whole point of this post is to say that I don’t want to call this feature ‘In the Mail’ since hardly any (if any at all) will come from the mail. Instead, my wallet.

Without further ado…

Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse 9) by Charlaine Harris (Purchased from Barnes and Noble)
The Louisiana town of Bon Temps—along with the rest of the world—is about to be rocked with some big supernatural news: like the vampires before them, the Were people—humans with the ability to change into animals—are about to reveal themselves to humanity. Psychic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse is apprehensive about the revelation, given the way some people in the small town revile anyone with extraordinary powers, including Sookie herself. While the initial announcement seems to go over smoothly with most people, tragedy strikes when Sookie’s brother Jason’s estranged wife, a werepanther, is found murdered and nailed up on a cross. Jason is the prime suspect, but Sookie has even bigger problems to deal with when she learns that a vicious fairy prince is determined to kill her. Darker and more ominous than earlier entries in the series, Harris’ latest raises the stakes (pun intended) for lovable heroine Sookie and comes up a winner.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith (Purchased from Barnes and Noble)
Following the success of his bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with another mélange of history and horror, Grahame-Smith inserts a grandiose and gratuitous struggle with vampires into Abraham Lincoln’s life. Lincoln learns at an early age that his mother was killed by a supernatural predator. This provokes his bloody but curiously undocumented lifelong vendetta against vampires and their slave-owning allies. The author’s decision to reduce slavery to a mere contrivance of the vampires is unfortunate bordering on repellent, but at least it does distract the reader from the central question of why the president never saw fit to inform the public of the supernatural menace. Grahame-Smith stitches hand-to-hand vampire combat into Lincoln’s documented life with competent prose that never quite manages to convince.